Transnational Dynamics in the MENA Region: Exploring Policy Responses
Author: Spyros Sofos
Regional security architecture has been undergoing a process of rapid transformation since the Arab Uprisings, which influences its very nature. Understanding the roots and primary characteristics of the changing security landscape requires a new lens through which to focus.
Among others, new research questions need to ask:
- how a single conflict yields secondary conflicts to form conflict ‘clusters’
- how conflicts within a cluster interconnect with those elsewhere
- how individual conflicts in the MENA region create security and power vacuums and involve regional and global powers.
This briefing paper summarises outcomes of a two-day workshop, examining of the implications of transnational dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and to explore potential policy responses. The workshop was the first in a series aimed at unpacking the transnational processes that engender insecurity and conflict, as well as those that are conducive to good governance, human security and development in the region, and translating their findings into policy recommendations.